


this mess of ours

by YourPalYourBuddy



Series: o brother where art thou [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Gen, One Shot, Separated at Birth, Snapshots, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourPalYourBuddy/pseuds/YourPalYourBuddy
Summary: “We’re not the same guy,” he says if they ask about the resemblance. “I respect his game, you know, and of course I hope he’s healing well. But we aren’t the same dude.”They’renot.Adam tells himself this until he doesn’t have to anymore.And it works, until Adam gets hit so hard his knee gives out. It works, until the doctors tell him the odds of him playing NHL hockey after a reconstruction. It works until he realizes they’re not so different.He buries that deep, deep, deep._________________________This was inspired by shitty-check-please-aus: "holster and jack turn out to be twins (jack was actually adopted by bad bob and his birth certificate was incorrect) and that Upsets adam greatly"Just a buncha Adam & Jack finding things out & working through it :) Adam's POV
Relationships: Adam "Holster" Birkholtz & Jack Zimmermann, Adam "Holster" Birkholtz & Justin "Ransom" Oluransi, Adam "Holster" Birkholtz & Shitty Knight
Series: o brother where art thou [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798156
Comments: 51
Kudos: 196





	this mess of ours

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's](https://shitty-check-please-aus.tumblr.com/post/612129810258493440/holster-and-jack-turn-out-to-be-twins-jack-was) a link to the prompt :)

________________________

Growing up playing hockey means Adam has heard it his whole life.

_ Wow, you look exactly like Jack Zimmermann. _

When he was ten it was a weird compliment, like their looks and talent were comparable in a similar way. At fourteen, it feels less like a compliment and more like the only thing anyone would say to him after games, regardless of if he scored ten goals or defended the net so well only his goalie got past him. Sometimes they’d say he played so well  _ because _ of Jack.  _ Who’s surprised when he looks like the son of a legend, right? _ a well-meaning parent says after they win Regionals. His parents awkwardly deflect the comment. He and Jack play in different leagues on different teams but Jack still fills up the locker room after a big win, and even more when they lose hard. 

Then Adam’s eighteen, and  _ you look like Jack Zimmermann _ turns into whispers when he gets onto the ice. Hard stares during faceoffs like remembering something unpleasant. Harder hits too, like checking Adam means that somewhere, recovering in a hospital hundreds of miles away, Jack can feel the displeasure from everyone who admired him. After a particularly heavy-hitting game Adam’s parents sit around the kitchen table with a stack of medical forms Adam’s too tired to read. He dislikes Jack a little without meaning to. It’s a difficult thing, guarding the legacy of a stranger just because your noses are shaped the same.

He starts playing juniors. He starts saying, “Jack Zimmermann looks like  _ me.” _ Adam chips until the comparisons chip away. Jack never got penalties? Adam’s had his fair share of shifts in the box. Jack’s playing style was controlled and sharp? Adam’s is fluid and lazy and almost like he’s dancing on ice. Jack was always uptight in interviews? Adam tells reporters about getting massive blisters in new skates and how, when he was a kid, he accidentally broke a window because he was stickhandling in the house. 

“We’re not the same guy,” he says if they ask about the resemblance. “I respect his game, you know, and of course I hope he’s healing well. But we aren’t the same dude.”

They’re  _ not. _ Adam tells himself this until he doesn’t have to anymore.

And it works, until Adam gets hit so hard his knee gives out. It works, until the doctors tell him the odds of him playing NHL hockey after a reconstruction. It works until he realizes they’re not so different.

He buries that deep, deep, deep.

____________

The biggest change after the hit is how much more his parents are pushing college. It’s not that they didn’t care before, because they had; his parents are both professors, and it took a few conversations for them to accept that Adam’s goal was to be starting on an NHL team by the age of twenty. The kitchen counter turns into a dumping ground of flyers and letters from schools around the country. Adam reads some of them at random and opens the rest to make it seem like he’s as invested in this as his parents.

“Where are you leaning?” his mom asks at dinner one night.

“I want a hockey school,” he says, and his parents glance at each other. He clears his throat. “There’s a DI school in Massachusetts I was looking at.”

This is true and false in varying measures. The truth of it is that Samwell does have a good hockey program, and Adam has been interested in visiting. The falsity is that he’s really only saying it now because he’s looking directly at the envelope. 

He forces a smile. “Thinking about sending in some tape, maybe get a scholarship.”

“That’s great, Adam,” his dad says. “Samwell has a lot of notable alumni who’ve done some great things.”

“Oh yeah? Like who?”

He says this to his plate, mentally calculating how much longer he needs to stay down here. He’s been on a pretty heavy  _ Cheers _ binge since surgery.

His mom hums. “Let’s see. Janet Johnson for one, the chairwoman for commerce. And then Alicia of course, supermodel turned actress turned philanthropist. I’m forgetting her maiden name but she’s married to Bad Bob.”

Fuck. “Alicia Zimmermann went to Samwell?”

Adam would give his other knee for his parents to say  _ no, wrong Alicia. _ But there’s only one Bad Bob. Which means— 

“Do you think,” Adam says slowly. “What’re the odds Jack Zimmermann enrolls?”

His parents glance at each other again. His dad says, “Last we heard he’s coaching a peewee team, right honey?”

Through a mouthful of mac and cheese Adam says, “How do you know what he’s up to?”

His mom makes a face. “Chew with your mouth closed, please,” she says instead of answering, and his dad starts talking about ducks before Adam can press.

____________

In August he walks into the locker room for tryouts and says, “Fuck.”

Up close, Jack Zimmermann looks even more like him than Adam’s ever wanted to admit. It’s the same jaw, the same eye shape, even the same mouth. Adam’s eyes are spaced just a little bit farther apart and his nose slopes  _ just _ differently enough and there are enough minor differences that Adam can still breathe. He focuses on the fact that Jack has dark hair so he doesn’t completely freak out. 

Jack looks up when Adam drops his bag at an empty spot and he seems to be seeing the resemblance too. He’s wearing an expression Adam recognizes as being his own “confused by math” face. Like there’s an explanation just out of reach.

“Holy shit,” some guy says. Adam instinctively looks at him before realizing abruptly that he’s naked. He studies Jack instead as the guy says, “This is some sci-fi shit.”

Jack frowns. “Who are you?”

“Adam Birkholtz,” Adam says. He doesn’t say  _ why do you have the same face as me _ or  _ fuck you _ or  _ I hope you’re feeling better. _ He’s feeling all of it.

Jack starts introducing himself, still frowning, but Adam interrupts him. “I know who you are.”

His tone comes out more harsh than perplexed. The naked guy ties a towel around his waist and sits next to Jack like he’s two seconds from throwing Jack behind him to protect him. Adam raises his eyebrows at him in invitation.

“I’m Shitty,” the guy says. “And this is my boy. And this is my team, so please, both of you, play nice.”

“I’m not trying to start shit,” Adam says, “I’m just confused.”

“I’m not a junkie. And I’m clean.” Jack’s voice is drier than a desert.

Adam shakes his head even though he was wondering about that, if truth be told. “I meant about why we look the exact fucking same.”

“Me too,” Jack says. “Me fucking too.”

____________

Adam makes the team and tells his parents in a text message. Jack makes the team and the whole country finds out in a magazine profile. His parents say,  _ We’re proud of you :)  _ There are a few days on campus when someone with a copy stops Adam and asks for his autograph.

“I’m blond,” he says in Annie’s on the fourth day. “You’re all fucking dumbasses, huh?”

His defensive partner laughs while the would-be fan goes bright red and leaves. Adam relaxes. Justin’s laugh, he’s learning, has a way of doing that. Of unknitting the tension in his body and replacing it with warmth.

Justin says, “Must’ve been the lacrosse team,” because apparently the hockey team and the LAX bros hate each other and this is exactly the kind of thing they’re supposed to say now.

“Where’d that start, anyway,” Adam says. He sips his coffee while pretending not to notice how good Justin’s skin looks in his light blue shirt. There’s gotta be a line, he reminds himself. Building the team comes before anything else.

Justin shrugs and says something about how they’d have to ask Shitty if they really want to know, that Shitty’s the gatekeeper to all the hockey lore they could ever ask for. And then Adam explains that he doesn’t think Shitty likes him much, and why he thinks that, and how strange it is to pass to someone who looks exactly like you, and Justin nods.

“I’ve had that,” he says. “Or almost. There was one other black guy on my team in high school and everyone called us the wrong names. That was just racism, though. This is something else.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Adam says. He almost takes Justin’s hand, then thinks better of it.

Justin shrugs. “There are worse things. Like your secret government clone fleeing the laboratory and becoming a hockey phenomenon, for example.”

Adam smiles. “I think I’m the clone, if anything,” he says. “Jack’s whole wardrobe costs more than anything I’ll ever own.”

“Not that you’d tell by looking at him,” Justin says. 

“You think I dress better than Jack Zimmermann?”

Justin wrinkles his nose. “I wouldn’t go  _ that _ far.” 

Adam chokes on his coffee. Justin winks at him.

____________

“Maybe it was aliens,” Shitty says one morning during team breakfast. He gestures between Adam and Jack with a forkful of eggs. “Like, some alien infiltration mission, but only one of you got dark hair for some reason.”

Adam and Jack look at each other. “To throw the humans off the scent,” Jack says gravely. Shitty and Justin laugh while the goalie, Johnson says something about plot devices. They ignore this.

“Or it’s a ripple in the Matrix,” Adam says, “and we’re the same person in two places at once.”

Jack nods like he’s seriously considering this. And — that, there. That face. Adam knows exactly how it feels to make that expression. The conversation changes to their favorite NHL teams and Justin and Jack nearly fight over who the best Canadian NHL team is, but Adam doesn’t forget that look on Jack’s face.

____________

He thinks Jack is avoiding him.

At first it didn’t bother him; after all, Adam’s spent the better part of his life being compared to Jack every time he so much as tied his skates — Adam: wrapped once around the top of the skates before a double knot; Jack: double knot that’s covered by his socks — so he didn’t mind, exactly, having distance. Jack’s always been known as a loner on his teams, with the exception of his friendship with Kent Parson, so it wasn’t something Adam even noticed before the first game.

The first game is fast and it’s intense and it’s everything Adam ever wanted from his first collegiate hockey game. His knee acts up a little in the second period, but that’s after he and Justin hit their stride and timed passes so well when they had possession that none of Harvard’s players could touch the puck at all, let alone score. Hall and Murray pat them all on the back when they go out for the third period. 

That’s when it happens. Jack and Johnson tap gloves with the whole team on the bench, but Jack’s on the ice for the faceoff before Adam can offer his glove. And he’d think maybe it was an accident, that’s he’s overthinking this too much, except Harvard isn’t even out of their locker room yet.

“Did you see that?” he whispers to Justin. 

“See what?”

“Jack didn’t tap gloves with me.”

Justin frowns. “I don’t think it was on purpose, right?”

Adam shrugs, very aware of Shitty sitting a few people down. “I hope not.”

____________

The weeks go by. They’re playing good hockey — some of their goals make ESPN’s weekly “Top College Plays” countdown — and Adam, finally, decides on economics for his major. He’s still not really invested in it, but he forces himself to go to class. It’s been a year since his surgery. It’s time to bury his dream of skating out onto an NHL rink, announcer shouting his name to hundreds of cheering fans, and move on.

Jack continues to avoid him, and it’s more obvious now. It’s when he goes into the kitchen in the Haus and Jack mutters something about seeing what’s on TV and brushing by him. It’s clear in how he continues to avoid his eyes during huddles, or how his chirps carefully graze past Adam instead of directly hitting even when he and Esther date briefly and breakup. Adam, Jack, Justin, Shitty, and Shitty’s friend Lardo play  _ Settlers of Catan _ once after a practice in October and, for the first time all year since tryouts, Jack’s talking to him.  _ Yelling _ would be more accurate.

“What the fuck, Holster, you can’t put grain there—”

“Show me where it says I can’t in the rulebook,” he says, crossing his arm. Jack opens his mouth to protest but he shakes his head, saying, “Show me where it  _ fucking _ says I can’t, I swear to God Zimmermann—”

“You just  _ can’t, _ it’s an unspoken rule, okay, I guess they don’t have manners in New Buffalo but in Montréal we don’t—”

Adam flips the board and storms out. As he goes he hears Lardo say, “Wow,” and Justin sighs. He thinks Justin’s about to say something else, but he slams the door anyway. He simmers on the front porch steps, staring at the clouds.

The door creaks open a few minutes later. “Right, so that’s going on the banned games list,” Shitty says easily, sitting next to him. 

Adam looks at him warily. “How long’s that list?” he asks.

“It’s solely Monopoly,” Shitty says. “I hate that game.”

Adam says, “It takes forever,” and Shitty hums. Adam watches him tip his head back to study the sky too. There’s a scraggly mustache breaking out over his top lip, and it humanizes him somehow. 

“Are you babysitting me?” he asks.

Shitty doesn’t pretend to dodge the question. “I wanted to figure out why you hate him so much,” he says. “Jack’s a good guy.”

“I don’t hate him.” This is sort of untrue, and he thinks Shitty can hear it. Adam thinks this is the most serious he’s seen him; in the locker room and on ice and in the Haus, Shitty’s loud and teasing, coaxing laughs out of all of them whether they want to or not. Right now there’s no humor in his face. His face isn’t hard, though; he doesn’t look like he’s going to start yelling, but he definitely wants an answer.

Adam backtracks. “It’s — it’s hard to unpack.”

Shitty leans back on his hands. “Unpack it anyway,” he says. “Baby steps. Jack’s one of my best friends, and this team is really fucking important to me, okay? I told you that the first time we met. This is something we gotta get through.”

Adam sighs. Shitty waits.

And he tells him everything. He tells him about being Jack’s lookalike on the ice and how he learned to play in a way distinctly different from Jack’s style, and how he got the comparisons anyway. He talks about his teammates either talking him up for the similarities or ripping into him about them, how the other teams seemed to target him because Adam Birkholtz and Jack Zimmermann were linked in his tiny section of the hockey world. How sometimes people would tell him to dye his hair black so he dyed it pink instead during October. And he tells Shitty all the resentment he attached to Jack, how all of his losses were his but after all of his wins the other parents talked as if it was Jack on the ice, not him. Shitty doesn’t say anything, but he hums now and then to show he’s listening.

“And then he overdosed,” Adam says. His throat is a little raspy from talking so much. “Do you know what it’s like, reminding people of a fallen hockey star? What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? His legacy isn’t mine to protect. Or it shouldn’t be, and then it was, and someone asshole checked me so hard it fucked up my knee. And we  _ both _ lost our NHL dreams.”

“You don’t know that, right?” Shitty says quietly. “You could still do it.”

Adam shakes his head. “The doctors are pretty positive,” he says, and wipes his face. “No shot.”

Shitty doesn’t say anything and Adam’s profoundly grateful for it. It gives him time to get his voice back under control.

“So yeah,” he says. “No, I don’t hate him. It’s just been a tough thing to shoulder.”

“I understand that,” Shitty says. “I can see how fucking hard that sort of pressure could be. Not having anything about yourself and your success be yours. Can I hug you?”

Adam nods, stunned, and Shitty pulls him in with just enough force. It’s steadying. If Shitty knows Adam wiped his eyes on his shirt before they draw apart, he’s kind enough not to say anything.

“Can I recommend something? You don’t have to do this, but I think it’d help.”

“What’s up?” Adam asks.

Shitty considers him. “Talk to Jack about this,” he says. Adam tenses. “No, really. He wants to clear the air, he just doesn’t know how. And he’d relate a lot more than you’d think.”

“If you’re sure,” Adam says. He consciously relaxes his muscles. “Not tonight, though. I’m still mad about the game.”

Shitty laughs. “Nah, you both gotta sleep on that one brah.”

____________

Adam and Justin walk home a few minutes after that. Adam’s very aware of Justin looking at him as they reach their dorms, and how their arms brush as they walk, but he doesn’t say anything. It feels as though he should probably sleep on this, too, before bringing it up.

____________

“Can I talk to you?” Adam says on the loading dock behind Faber. 

Jack looks up from where he’s rolling out his calves. “Sure,” he says, and Adam sits next to him.

He feels unreasonably tense. He tells himself it’s just because Parents’ Weekend is in a few days and his parents are coming. Just nerves for that. He focuses on the sunset to calm himself down.

“I talked with Shitty,” Adam says. Jack’s face doesn’t change; it’s the expression Adam usually wears when something he expected happens. “He said I should talk to you.”

“He told me some of it,” Jack says, switching calves. He looks extremely earnest when he says, “Don’t be mad, please, it was just — he just told me about pressure, and living up to other people’s reputations. And I — I relate to that.”

Adam feels like he’s been hit by a brick. It’s the most obvious thing. “Your dad.”

Jack nods, and now he takes a deep breath. “I’m on anxiety meds,” he says. “Before the draft, I took too many. I’m okay now, I meant what I said to you during tryouts, but. It’s a hard thing to work through. I know where you’re coming from.”

“I didn’t realize,” Adam says, and he doesn’t know how he didn’t know before. Jack never liked to talk about his family much. Adam thought it was just him being quiet. 

Jack smiles a little. “And I didn’t realize about you either,” he says. “I thought you hated me for the usual reasons.”

Adam says, “Guess we’ve both been blinded by ourselves a little, huh?” and Jack ducks his head.

“Something like that.”

They’re quiet a moment. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, “that it took this long to figure it out. You’d think if we’re — what’s Shitty saying? If we’re aliens from another planet, we would’ve found a way to communicate.”

“He is pretty fond of his alien theory, isn’t he.” Jack’s face turns thoughtful. “I gotta say, it’s weird as fuck seeing my expressions on someone else’s face.”

“I completely agree,” Adam says. “Honestly, I thought we were twins at first, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

Jack says, “Different birthdays,” and he twists his mouth. “Maybe distant cousins? My mom’s from the States, she could be connected to someone in your family a few generations back.”

A thought strikes him. “My parents knew you were coaching peewee hockey before the story broke in the papers,” Adam says. “I bet our parents know each other somehow.”

Jack yawns. “Well, mine are coming down for Parents’ Weekend, are yours?” Adam hums a yes. “We can ask them then. Figure some things out, hopefully.”

“Yeah, okay,” Adam says. 

They sit on the loading dock until the sun sets fully, and with every inch it sinks closer to the horizon, some weight on Adam’s chest gets lighter and lighter.

____________

In the coming days Justin and Shitty workshop new plans for fooling their parents. “It’s prime prank time, Jackybabe,” Shitty says, and Justin chimes in with “They’re selling Halloween wigs cheap at the Murder Shop ‘N Shop.” Lardo comes round more and more often, each time with a new sketch of what they’d look like if they dressed up as each other. Jack protests that he already knows what he’d look like blond, and Adam reminds them he and Jack have different accents, but that just sets off a contest to best mimic Jack’s accent before Johnson says the weirdest shit Adam’s ever heard.

“Just Parent Trap them,” Johnson tells them over tacos. “It’s a time-honored plot device, and it’s relevant.”

“What the fuck does that mean,” Adam starts to ask, but Shitty frantically waves him down. 

“Trust me, you do  _ not _ wanna get him started,” Shitty whispers. “Lards did once when we were high and he started talking about the multi-fic-verse and every different version of ourselves we’ve ever lived. I get nightmares about it.”

The frogs spruce up the Haus during a very long all-day cleaning session that Lardo talks her way out of, because even though she’s learning how to be their manager she’s not getting paid, and therefore she shouldn’t have to do this. The team agrees. She spends the day playing music on her phone and chirping Shitty whenever possible, though Adam notices she drops that the second Shitty takes his shirt off.

“Are they,” Adam says, trailing off suggestively. 

Justin reaches for the paper towels. “I have no idea. I think so?”

“Not yet,” Jack says. “He likes her, though.”

“Who likes whom?” Shitty shouts from the living room.

“You already know!” Jack calls back.

They get lost in a back-and-forth that draws Justin’s attention, thereby letting Adam look at him without anyone noticing. He doesn’t know if he’s being subtle or not. A lot of his attention has been taken up with the drama between himself and Jack, but now that that’s closer to resolved … Adam lets himself appreciate how the light looks on Justin’s neck, his nose. He thinks someday he’d like to tell him about it. This just isn’t the time. 

____________

Adam’s parents come in Friday afternoon and he shows them around campus, basking in how much they praise the landscaping and how excited they are about the Pond and how pleased they are that he’s still cleaning his room. They go out for dinner to a cozy Thai place and his parents catch him up on what his sisters have been up to, and how Emma’s new boyfriend has smelled like cheese all three times they’ve met him, and how they’re mildly concerned that Jess’s hockey team isn’t communicating well on the ice. 

They bring up hockey at the end of the meal, which dovetails nicely into his plans with Jack. He clears his throat and tries to keep his breathing under control, suddenly very nervous.

“Speaking of hockey,” he says, “wanna see Faber?”

They agree enthusiastically. His mom tells him random facts about the rink on the way — “Did you know the windows were a late addition? Also, rumor has it the ghosts of every former coach haunts the water fountain next to the locker rooms.” — while he texts Jack that it’s happening, it’s finally happening. 

Jack responds immediately.  _ We’re in the lobby. _

Adam takes a shaky breath. Every hair on his body is standing up when he pulls open the doors.

The first thing he notices is that Jack looks vaguely like a mix of his parents, the way most children are. The second thing is that, now that they’re all in the same room, Jack looks even more like Adam’s parents. The third— 

“Jack?” his mom says. Her voice trembles on his name. “Is it — is it really you?”

“JoAnn,” his dad says hoarsely, holding her hand.

Jack looks straight at Adam and now his face is one Adam doesn’t recognize. He looks like a world is collapsing between his fingers. Shattered. Adam doesn’t recognize this face by sight, but he can tell, somehow, his expression is identical.

“This isn’t what was supposed to happen,” Jack says. “How—?”

“We wanted to tell you,” Alicia Zimmermann says, “that you had a twin, Jack, we just — we wanted to.”

Alicia calls Jack “Sweetheart” but Adam interrupts.

“Is he — my brother? Is that why we look so fucking alike, and this whole time,” he realizes, suddenly furious, “this whole time people were saying I looked like him, he was my brother? How could you do this to us?”

Both sets of parents look so, so small. There’s no air in this room and it is at once too big and about to crash into them. Adam and Jack look at each other, and then Adam just runs.

____________

He stops next to the haunted water fountain and starts pacing instead, fully planning to wear a hole in the floor before the game.  _ The game. _ He laughs a little. All of this dropped in their laps and they have to play through it. His brother, his  _ twin, _ playing on the same team as him and hating each other a little and then figuring themselves out, and now — now it’s all fucked again. There’re too many places for this mess to spread to. Adam knows he’s whole on his own. It’s hard to imagine, though, how much more of himself he would’ve been if he’d known earlier. 

He wants to talk to Justin.

He splashes his face. When that doesn’t work, he does it again. His phone’s been buzzing in his pocket this whole time but he finally fishes it out of his pocket. Twelve missed calls, fourteen text messages. One of them is from Jack.

It says,  _ Come back? Please. I don’t want to do this alone. _

“Fucking shitfuck motherfuck,” Adam whispers, squeezing his eyes shut, but he goes back.

____________

They make it sound so simple.

“We couldn’t afford two children,” Adam’s mom says tearily. “We just couldn’t, baby, we couldn’t. And I knew Alicia from college, and she was trying to have a baby with her husband, but it just — it wasn’t working and here I was with two.”

“So we started planning.” Bad Bob holds Alicia close. Adam notices a vein pulsing in Jack’s throat. “We drew up a contract. Decided we’d tell you both different birthdays. We picked out names, together, all of us. Something we thought worked together. And then—”

Alicia says, “And then you two were born,” and she’s smiling even though she’s crying. Something in Adam’s chest breaks at the sight of his almost-mother crying like this. “You both arrived in the middle of the night. We came to the hospital, and Jack, honey, you were born with so much  _ hair. _ So dark. So it just, you know. It made sense. You’re ours, honey.”

“And Adam,” his dad says, “you were the loudest baby I’ve ever seen. So full of life and wanting us to know you were here. And that never stopped.”

Adam doesn’t take his eyes off Jack, and Jack holds his gaze the whole time. His brother. He lets himself wonder what a life like that would’ve been like, but it’s too difficult to think of. Too many variables at play.

“So when you said Jack’s coaching a team, and you said, ‘last we heard,’” Adam says slowly, “you really meant last you heard. Like, not out of a magazine. You knew.”

“We’ve been keeping in more regular contact since the draft,” his mom says quietly. “It used to just be the odd holiday message here and there. Anonymous presents on birthdays and things. But then they needed more medical information, and we realized how silly it was not to just — talk. Be somewhat in each other’s lives.”

“It would’ve been strange, you showing up to the funeral without any conversation beforehand,” Jack says, and their parents wince. “Don’t do that. I am not  _ wrong.” _

“Did this happen on purpose then? Us at the same school?” Adam asks.

His mom shrugs helplessly. “We thought it was time. That if you figured it out, it’d hurt less.”

“How could it not hurt,” Jack says, “when you’ve kept us from each other our whole lives?”

He doesn’t say it heatedly. His is a cool anger, Adam notices. Another difference. This whole time Adam’s felt on the verge of an eruption.

“Do I have any other siblings you’ve given away? Any other fake birthdays wandering around?” he asks. 

“No, of course not—”

Jack’s phone goes off, and he answers after checking the ID. They all watch him. He stares at the floor. After an initial greeting, he doesn’t say anything except “Okay” before hanging up.

“That was Murray,” he says quietly. “It’s time to get our gear on.”

There’s an explosion of sound as their parents start talking over each other. Adam catches fragments, stuff like “play well” and “can’t we just talk this out first” and “we love you boys, both of you.” He doesn’t know which one of those statements to trust, so he trusts none of them. His mom tries to hug him but he shrugs her off.

“I can’t,” he says, and he and Jack leave.

____________

“Hey, Johnson?” Adam ties his skates. Next to him, Justin whispers, “Wanna talk about it?” He makes a gesture that means  _ later _ in response.

“Holster?”

He bites on his mouthguard. “How’d that movie end? Parent Trap, I mean.”

“The parents get married,” Johnson says. “A whole happy family, together again.”

Adam frowns. Jack says, “That’s not our story,” and Johnson nods. 

“It’ll work out,” Johnson says gently. “Just gotta get through this game, then you can talk it out.”

“You promise?”

“From the very bottom of my binary, computer-coded heart.”

“I told you,” Shitty mutters as they leave the locker room. “I told you he was pretty fucking weird.”

____________

The game stretches thin and swells and then thins again, or it’s just Adam, and how everything’s sort of warped now. Time doesn’t feel real anymore. There was someone, a full person, out there with most of his DNA breathing and laughing and crying, and Adam’s so very aware of how little he knows that person. 

There’s a faceoff and a faceoff and a faceoff. There are whistles and whistles and whistles. He’s dimly aware of Hall saying something to him when he comes off the ice after his sixth shift in the first period but he can’t hear it. In the second, Justin sends him an easy pass that he would’ve caught without problem four hours ago. It takes him seventeen minutes into the second period before he realizes Jack’s playing an amazing game while he’s been on autopilot.

“How’re you doing that,” he asks during their next shift.

Jack says, “I’m pissed off,” and skates off hard after the puck.

So Adam gets  _ mad _ in the third. He’s angrier than he’s ever been in his life and his skates know it by how he shifts direction so quickly, cutting into the ice so much he sends showers of snow flying up behind him. He catches every pass and then some, and gets assists on Jack’s two goals. He drifts into a daydream where he’s being interviewed on his performance after this game and amuses himself by imagining himself saying, “It’s a family thing,” to someone asking why he and Jack played so well together.

The clock ticks time away and the seconds stitch themselves into something with some semblance of meaning. The world reconstructs around these fracture lines and rebuilds stronger, fuller. Adam breathes deep. He can be mad now. He sort of understands why it happened, and he’s allowed to be mad about it. 

The buzzer goes. Their bench floods the ice, giving Johnson rubs on the helmet for protecting their net so well, and Adam looks into the stands for the first time. Looks directly at his parents sitting with Jack’s, screaming so loud for their victory.

____________

He and Jack are the last ones in the locker room. When he realizes, Adam laughs a little. It sounds empty even to him.

“You ready?” he asks.

Jack says, “If I have to be.” 

Before they reach the lobby Adam pulls gently on Jack’s bag, and he stops. 

“I just wanted to say,” Adam says, “that I’m happy I’m not doing this alone, Jack. Thanks for being here.”

Jack smiles. This face Adam recognizes, but not from himself; this is the smile from winning  _ Settlers of Catan _ that one time when Shitty unbanned it, and just before he banned it again. His brother’s smile.

Jack says, “I’m glad you’re here too,” and they head out to face this mess of theirs. 

________________________

**Author's Note:**

> yeah I know the title isn't _exactly_ the last line, but I liked it better so
> 
> this was a lot of fun! I think I *knew* but didn't Know how similar they actually are to each other, so this kinda dredged up a slew of new ideas for me, all of which I'm more excited for than my midterms
> 
> pls pls yell with me in the comments or [come find me on tumblr :)](https://ivecarvedawoodenheart.tumblr.com/)


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